January 27, 2009. The Russian FCS Head Andrei Belyaninov met with General Director of the Main Customs Authority of Finland Tapani Erling at the Federal Customs Service.

During the meeting the parties exchanged opinions on the ways of increasing effectiveness of Russian-Finnish state border checkpoints, including development of the advance electronic sharing of information about transported goods system and modernization of customs and transport infrastructure above all.

Heads of the Russian and Finnish customs services came to a conclusion that it was necessary to consider elaborately the question of commodity flow transfer between the existing automobile checkpoints, and taking into account the volume and intensity of cargo traffic they declared for more active usage of railway transport and Baltic ports’ potential.

Moreover Heads of the Russian FCS and the Main Customs Authority of Finland agreed on intensification of bilateral cooperation in the fields, such as customs staff training, application of inspective-search complexes at customs clearance, and customs clearance of fissile and radioactive materials.

Strengthening of regional cooperation between the customs authorities of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Finland was emphasized. According to the parties, such cooperation will allow to efficiently identify problems connected with customs administration of foreign trade activity, and jointly take specific measures on their solution.